Oh yeah.  You know what’s great about being a sociology major who feels like she no longer has a family (though does have individual associations with people of whom she is biologically related)?  Well, sociological theories are a great source of enlightenment, and almost cheer me up when I am on the verge of being awash with angsty emotions.   For example,  re-framing “family” as merely a social construct makes the realization that I am less a part of what I thought was my family than I ever was, while non-biological people I have never met have replaced me, seem much less painful.  That statement may seem harsh, but I’d rather feel enlightened making sense of changes in family structures than feel bitter about those changes.

Complimenting family as a social construct is the observation of how relationships exist amongst people with independent (as opposed to interdependent) self concepts. At 4:09 am, I am a bit too tired to go into detail, and risk plagiarizing a really great paper, so you can read it here, courtesy of the good old University of British Columbia.

Raymond Carver, an author whose work I am not too fond of, does a nice job at illustrating the emotional strain between wanting to believe that love is real and eternal, while facing the reality of knowing how transactional relationships really are:

“You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, and have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love, we’re talking about, it would be just a memory.” (Carver, 1981 — “What we talk about when we talk about love”)

The above passage is referring to romantic relationships, but it can be applied to any type of relationship. I love my brothers; I love my mom; I love my late father, but we are not a family anymore.  Once we were a family, but we no longer are (unless you want to get all Slaughterhouse Five on the linearity of our lifetimes).  Yeah, it’s painful to think about sometimes, but at least I have silly abstract theories to comfort myself with, right?

Goodnight. Good morning.

Roman Polanski was arrested Switzerland last month. Some people believe that he should still be institutionally punished for the crimes he was convicted of, while other people do not.  Fair enough.

Sexual assault cases are tricky.  I guess all law is technically tricky, but sexual assault cases are extremely challenging.  The issue of sexual assault deals with taboo; the way the law approaches it is rife with old-fashioned myths about the roles of women, their expected behaviour, and their power relations with men.

The thing about being raped, that gets so easily overlooked, is that it destroys people.  Yes, you will get a harsher sentence for murdering someone, but a dead person doesn’t have to live the rest of his or her life with feelings of self-loathing, guilt, loneliness, and being misunderstood.  I am not saying that rape is “better or worse” than murder, but I’m trying to put this into perspective for people who look at violent crimes as though they can rationally be graded in severity.

Now that Roman Polanski has been arrested, the victim of the crime is being harassed incessantly by the media. According to reports, more than 500 requests for interviews/comments have been made since the arrest. That’s more than 15 calls per day.  Those numbers, of course, don’t include e-mails, random appearances at the victim’s workplace or home.  I’ll bet everybody who shares the victim’s name has been contacted by several interns from media companies, who have been requested by their employers to track her down on Facebook and see if she has something to say.

This type of harassment can cause the victim to experience something called “revictimization”.  If you don’t know what that is, google it and come back later.

So you know what a really difficult part of being raped is?  This may be surprising, but it’s not the sex itself; a lot of people look at rape as a “sex” thing, but it’s about control.  The worst part about being raped, at least from my personal experience as a rape victim, is the loss of control.  Some people find this notion wishy-washy, but you really do lose fucking control over yourself. It’s no fun.

Do you know what it’s like to no longer feel like you have control over your body? Over what you do with it, and what goes in it, and who you let into your life?  Do you know what it’s like to go from being a teenage girl, to an asexual creature who looks at every man like he is a threat, and is repulsed by being touched in the most harmless manner?  And then do you know what it’s like to live in a world that blames the victim for being subject to what I just described?  To not be able to talk about it with friends, because it makes them uncomfortable, because the issue is so taboo?

And do you know what it’s like to have to repeat your story over and over again to cops, to attorneys — in front of the person who did it to you? And you repeat the “story” so many times that it no longer feels like your story was even yours to begin with.  So not only did you lose control over your physical being, but the recollections of your past — an abstract part of self that only you once knew — are taken away as well, and left to other people to decide what they mean?

So imagine that.  So which experience is worse? The act itself? The aftermath and the way society approaches the issue? Or the knowledge that unless something drastic changes in the policy and perception, the act and society’s approach will forever be a see-saw of revictimization?

Does this mean victims shouldn’t go to court, because they should know better that they’ll experience further harm?  No.  It shouldn’t be like that.  More victims of crime WOULD go to court if there wasn’t such a risk of being told they were liars, sluts, deserving, and useless.

In an article on CNN.com, the victim (in an interview well before the arrest) discusses how she was treated by the press after the rape, and after the trial.  It’s tragic.

And so the victim wants the case to be thrown out.  Why? Because it’s causing her further harm.  Because the media is causing her harm, and the state is causing her harm.  Not Roman Polanski; society.  You.  Everyone who keeps clicking on those stories and googling her name, and encouraging the press to sacrifice this woman to the crops, like in that South Park episode.  The Attorney General says the charges can’t be dropped for legal reasons, but that’s bullshit.  Since when did criminal courts care about rape victims?

As the victim said, in her interview with CNN:

“The one thing that bothers me is that what happened to me in 1977 happens to girls every day, yet people are interested in me because Mr. Polanski is a celebrity.”

And if you couldn’t figure out why the subject of this post was in that particular order when you started reading, maybe you will have a better idea.

I was sitting in class, staring at an elderly man who had enrolled in the course, when I became full of fear and anxiety.

All I could think about was the idea that, unless I die young, I won’t always be the person who I recognize myself as.

There was a time in my life when almost everything that mattered, or defined me positively, was lost or taken away, through no choice of my own. I was young, and it was not a happy time.

And so, I started my life over, when virtually nothing was left; I was reborn at 21. (By reborn I absolutely do not mean in a religious manner.)

Some days I feel like I’m 10 years old, but also middle aged, but I look like a teenager.

I remember how when I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine being 18 — 20. I knew I would grow up, but the future was so far away. I would lie in bed, trying to stay as still as possible, hoping that I would actually get frozen in limbo, and not have to experience the terrifying ordeal of being old and become the face of imminent death. I think of how I’m 25 now, and 40 is still 15 years away. The time it took to reach 25 will have to pass all over again — my whole life span, until I reach 50. Terrifying?

And reading historical texts, in that class, where the elderly man sat, from over a thousand years ago reinforces how insignificant and useless angst is, when one day I will turn to dust and cease to be, whether or not I was momentarily pained over the notion of one day no longer being a hip, young thing.

“And I do not see how I can get out of asking this question: Does it matter to anyone or anything that all these peepholes were closed so suddenly? Since all the property is undamaged, has the world lost anything it loved?” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, Deadeye Dick

I’m in my house right now in Toronto.

There is so much strain between me on the west coast, and me in Toronto.

I sometimes toy with the idea of moving back here, because I really do miss the familiarity.

I keep going back to this topic from Urban Geography, which was the most abstract dimension — the sense of place. Other dimensions include production, reproduction and…. I forget. I had this essay question on an exam which asked me to explain my sense of place in Vancouver.  I couldn’t.  I had just come back from visiting Toronto for the first time in two years and described how simple things like seeing streetcars and my familiarity with the most simple, originally subconscious, attachments I have to this city made me realize my “place”, and how Toronto is my place.  In contrast, aside from my house, itself, I don’t feel like I have the same sense of place in Vancouver.

Home is where you choose to make it, and I have been trying to make Vancouver my home.

Being in Toronto is nice, but it’s really hard on me, because I miss the past, and still can’t accept that the past will never be the present again.

Conversely, In Vancouver, I don’t have a past that is holding me back, but that lack of past sometimes leaves me empty.

Qualities found ?)

-a need to justify opening a bottle of cheap wine when your co-conspirator has to bail due to a hangover

-watching 50 horror and sci-fi movies in chronological order, with the goal of aggregating some (as yet) unknown data related to… horror and sci-fi movies. (quasi-academics don’t do things for fun)

oh! in keeping on the subject of quasi-academics, such as myself, somebody needs to write a book titled something like “Relationship Advice for Academics: love lessons for those who are not as socially inept as pure-bred geeks, but still lack the proper social skills to form a loving relationship with something other than an abstract idea”

A person is not an abstract idea, technically.. But don’t let me go there.

Tip 1:

I don’t know what tip #1 is.

Which is why someone needs to be commissioned to write this.  The person should either be a refugee of academia, or a hack who is really, really good at pursuading overly-critical minded, individualistic, self-obsessed douche bag knowitalls that their words and advice will actually work.

Perhaps the description of characteristics possessed by said “douche bag”, who needs to be convinced by the latter hack, are the negative qualities that keep “overly-critical minded, individualistic, self-obsessed douche bag knowitalls” from being able to have a relationship.
OH SNAP.  My qualities which have disbarred me from ever having a real boyfriend have allowed me to determine the problem! The difference between myself, and the hack, is that the hack would most likely have some sort of practical suggestions; whereas, I am still waiting for the hack to give me a simple answer that I have made too complex to find.

OH SNAP.  I just wroke the geekery version of what, I guess, is the lame-ass Shakespearean/Kieregarard-y bullcrap rhetorical question of what the poet, Haddaway once asked: “WHAT IS LOVE”?

-A strong disdain for Karl Marx

-loss

-gains

- change/lack thereof/fear of change/awareness of change/ discomfort with the reality etc etc etc

-relationship [s] [?] (see all of the above, save for the strong disdain for Karl Marx)

- effort x 2 x 4 x6 x 2  (see all of the above, including the strong disdain for Karl Marx)

- The happiest day of my life.  Okay, that was in July, 2008, but it deserves a fair mention: sans happiest day, none of the above would exist in the same right which they do.

- Le Temps Detruit Tout (see note just above this).

Sometimes I get carried away and say the wrong things.  I’m aware at the time, and in retrospect I think “maybe I shouldn’t have said that, because I was so close to coming across as well put-together, and there I go without thinking before I speak.”

Sometimes I say things I have already said, several times over.  It’s not that I think I’m particularly interesting; rather, I forget what I have said, and to whom I have said it.  Even if the conversation was meaningful. Other times, the conversation was meaningful, but I don’t know if it was to you, so I repeat myself to understand if it meant anything to you the first time around.

Did it?

- I tended to cross the line a few times, and that damages everything but myself in the end.

- Basically, I reduced everything back to just me, to protect myself, my interests an as a subconscious way to keep outside interests on the outside.

I would prefer not to, but there is a steep learning curve.

- forgetting to use spell check.  I know how to spell, and my grammar is fine when I please.  Technology has made me lazy. I can has smart.

Sometimes I should put my foot in my mouth.

I always say the most inappropriate things and, conversely, never seem to be able to say the things I need to say until it’s too late.

As can be expected from a person who owns and maintains a blog, an angsty blog:

I constantly can’t stop feeling like I’ve gotten myself into one mess after another and I don’t know how to stop.  I feel like I always have to be creating problems and damaging things that could be left unharmed.

When I was in Toronto, I was rummaging through the boxes of stuff I have in storage and came across two pieces of paper.  One was “Journal #10″ and the other was “Journal #11″ for Grade 9 English.  In this class, we would be given a question/topic to write one page about.  I thought I would post them here, because they are kind of funny and obnoxious.

Note that both journal entries begin with the same statement:

Journal #10 – The Telephone and its role in a teenager’s life 

I find this question quite offensive.  It discludes [is that even a real word?] life of Amish people who do not use telephones for communicating.  They are less inept at talking face to face.  If they were more shy, they’d use telephones too.

Some people who phone you talk for too long and don’t know when to shut their chatterbox [I was trying to restrain myself from swearing].  I don’t like talking on the phone, I prefer to talk in person with someone.

It’s good to have a phone with a little red light so you can tell if someone’s listening to you.

Sometimes you can’t tell if you’re really talking to the person you wanted to.  For example, my friend Chris has a brother who sounds exactly like him.  If he answers the phone, he pretends to be Chris until I say something  that makes him go “Ha ha! This is Matthew!” He’s a loser.

Telephones are not a big importance unless your friends live in Hawaii.  In that case, the telephone is important because otherwise you couldn’t talk to them.

Mark: 5/5. Teacher’s comment: “This would be a good idea for a story!”

#11 Thanksgiving: What I am thankful for

I find this question quite  offensive, because I am not thankful for Thanksgiving.

Actually, I am thankful only a handful of relatives showed up at my house for Thanksgiving.  I’m thankful I don’t eat turkey, our turkey was not featherless when my mom bought it.  It’s good to be vegetarian.

I am thankful that this Wednesday, coffee is only 16 cents a cup at Coffee Time meaning I could get 13 coffees for $2.08.  I think I’ll spend 5$ instead, because I’m thankful for finding a 5 dollar bill in my pocket this morning.

I’m thankful not to be sitting at Linda’s table, as she is annoying and creates quite an offensive sound.

Last of all, I’m thankful I’m not because.  If I were, I wouldn’t be able to write in my journal all the things I’m thankful for at this moment.

I am thankful my cat is getting spayed on Wednesday.

Mark: 5/5. Peer editing comment: “Amen – Chas”

….when life goes on.

I am back in Vancouver and feeling a lot better that I was before I left.  Toronto treated me better than it had in years.  I had forgotten about the bright lights; the lack of mountains; the ABYSMAL transit system; the bluntness of people that is interpreted as rudeness out west; the ignorance; the familiarity; the comfort of being in a place that is chaotic, not merely because of inter-personal relationships, but because the city is so damned chaotic.  This is not something negative.  This is home, and home does not necessarily mean the place where you hang your hat.  Home is where you feel like yourself in a most unrestricted manner.

Growing up in Toronto, you don’t exactly get a sense of how intense of a city it is, and you assume that people who don’t understand the city are hicks, or people who resent the self-appointed “centre of the universe”.  I have a love-hate relationship with the city, and may or may not move back one day when it is safe enough for me to do so.
I could write about the specifics of the trip, but that would take all day.  It was not the specifics, it was the fundamental qualities of the experiences that made it such a meaningful trip.

I had a great time.  I wish I could have seen more people.  I would like to thank everybody who was such a great friend, and so supportive of me during a time when I needed you more than anything.

I arrived at the airport and promptly sat down at the bar. I popped a Valium; ordered a glass of red wine.  Oh, to be your typical tortured artist, jetsetter wanna be. 

I sat there and thought about how every time I have flown somewhere, there was always a pang in my heart, somehow related to travel.

 Some people fly for business.  Some people fly for leisure.  I fly as a form of self medication, or so it seems.  Moving to escape my past;  to start over a new leaf; to see someone you are madly in love with, or think you are; to surround your self with your friends in a time of need; to give yourself and others space who so greatly need it; to not be homesick; to get the fuck out of one place and get the fuck somewhere else, but wish there was a place between point A and point B in which you could hide forever.

Then there are those candid conversations that you have at the airport bar with all the other heavily medicated jetsetter wannabes. The lonely cliches, hunched over their pint, or gracefully attemping to sip on a martini. 

Yesterday afternoon I met a man from England who now lives in Winnipeg.  We talked about terrorism and we talked about love.

When I got here, Byron, Gigi and my mom were all there, and I let my larynx explode with vicious words, detailing everything I had needed to express, but could not in the same context from 3000 miles away.  I felt better.

Casey  got home at 3:30 AM, so we stayed up till 5:30, smoking, drinking red wine, and most importantly, talking.

I love my brothers, and it is so wonderful to be home.

This is what happens when you get so comfortable crawling into the cave that you can’t get out.

Half a slice of mini-cake.  A few gulps of juice. One potato chip (mighty tasty). Half a pack of cigarettes.  Alcohol, please.  Speedballs, PLEASE.

The only thing more self indulgent than sex is pain, and the self-pity or self-wallowing whence it comes.  I’m an asshole.

I don’t want to be sitting with the emotions bleeding out of me so visibly that it looks like I’m attacking.  I don’t want to experience these emotions that make me feel like I’m an asshole for having them.

No sleep.  No food.  No me.  No you.

I’m going back home to take it easy for a few days.

Sometimes I have days where I wish I could move back to Toronto.  If I move back, I know I’ll miss Van.  I miss Toronto.  I miss my real friends.  I don’t know who my real friends are here. (Yes I know you are my real friend…but you are one of a select few). 

Don’t we all have those moments? Those moments where we question true friendship? People in Vancouver gave me the impression that they were my real friends, and my friends in Toronto had stabbed me in the back. Who lied? Who was the real friend and who stabbed who? Who left me and has rarely spoken to me since events came about that were barely related to me?

Where are you now?

 I am more or less alone in a city far from home. 

I miss the big city, and I miss my friends.  I miss the long-established histories and friendship.. I miss the stupid drama that pissed me off so much.  I miss the distorted guitars; the Chucks; the shots of Jager, all which were replaced by handdrums, ponchos and Kokanee.

I miss the old Leora, who would beat the crap out of the new Leora if they ran into eachother on the street.  I miss Bad Leora.  I miss the Leora who had no direction in life, and was so unhappy that she did not even know what it was like to feel the disappointment she feels towards life right now.

Have you ever sat in a waiting room of a medical clinic and been accosted by a fellow clinic-patron? Today after going to Bon’s, I went to a clinic at Broadway& Commercial to get my stitches removed. While I was sitting, waiting for my turn to see the doctor, a man came in and gave me a little lookover. When the seat next to me was vacated, he promptly came across the room and sat down next to me.

I was sitting there, staring at the wall, and could feel him staring at me. About thirty seconds later he started talking to me. I would reply to him, then return to staring at the wall, and he would just keep staring. So I would look over, and buddy was just sitting there gazing at me with a creepy smile on his face.

I was wearing a red hoodie and jeans. He was wearing a red hoodie and jeans.

When I got into the examination room, the doctor told me that my cut is looking “great”. Then he asked how it happened, and put his hand into a fist and made a slow motion “punching your patient in the face” gesture. I said “oh, no. I fell on a milk crate actually.” Funny how even doctors will assume that a black eye and stitches in the head are as a result of some form of assault.

He took a wad of gauze and soaked it in alcohol, then rubbed it over my face as though the gauze was actually sandpaper and my face was an unfinished hardwood floor. Brutal. That stung. He removed my stitches and then told me that my cut could still get infected. YAY. Hello Polysporin.

When I got home, I took a look in the mirror.

This has definitely left quite a mark. It puts the original ‘clopsing to shame.

Well, today is the first day of spending the rest of my life as a woman who no man will ever find physically attractive due to her having a deviation affecting the symmetry of her face.

Hello men. I am single, cynical, surly and sore. Call me. Call me Cyclops.

Game plan for after I wake up tomorrow:

- Go to clinic to get stitches removed.

- Get lungs checked out to see if I have bronchitosaurus; I have had a bad cough for the past three weeks

- Finish filling out forms for work.

-Fill out form to get Care Card here

- Fill out Criminal Injuries Compensation Board forms; Forage for postage stamps and envelopes

- Remember the simpler days when all I had to do was wake up and play with Duplo.

My friends are awesome.  Last night, Jamus’s band, Cosmedic, was playing at the Media Club.  I wanted to go, but was feeling self conscious because of my eye.  Mike, Lindsay and Linzee drew stitches on their faces with eyeliner.  It was pretty sweet.

So I was standing next to Lindsay as she was ordering a drink when the bartender says to me “wow that’s quite a shiner you’ve got there!” And I was a little embarassed.. I tried to joke about it, and then pointed at Lindsay saying “she has one too!”  Then the bartender actually said “a bit of battered wife syndrome? ha ha ha” or something. HOLY SHIT.  No comment. Lindsay called him on that.  I wanted to leave, but I didn’t.

I crashed at Kerby’s because he lives near by and I wanted to sleep.  Bad idea.  Kerby lives at 14th and Cambie, meaning there are jackhammers and steamshovels going off outside of the living room window.

We went to the Dutch Wooden Shoe Café for breakfast and it was totally surreal.  I had been there before on a Sunday when the whole “after-church” crew was there, and it was *very* busy.  This morning, we were the only people there.  Kerby said it was like we had snuck into some Dutch man’s house.  If you haven’t been to the Dutch Wooden Shoe Café, allow me to describe it:  It is tacky.  It is like being in a big, wooden house covered in wacky Dutch paraphernalia and photographs of patrons.  And Moonlight Sonata was playing softly over the speakers ha.

So we’re sitting there, and I’m wearing sunglasses to cover my black eye, while my stitches are perfectly visible.  It was like something out of a Tarantino movie, or Natural Born Killers… It felt like we should have been plotting something.

On Thursday, I may go to the Mongolian Grill with Kerby.  Why? Well, he filled out a customer profile once while he was there.  One your birthday you get a free meal; on your anniversary you get a free bottle of wine.  I was going to pretend I was his wife and that May 10th is our anniversary.  There is only one reason I may not go, and it is not because of my facial injury.  Kerby has met a girl.  I am merely a platonic friend.  So, obviously I would not be offended if Kerby and said girl end up going to the Grill.  Plus, wine is best when accompanying a non-concussed head.

If I do go, we’re going to have a big argument while were sitting in the restaurant and freak people out.  Only cause I have the cut on my face.  We want to get someone to videotape it.  It will be hilarious.

Sometimes I feel like I must be part autistic.  Autistic or something.  I can’t relate to people; I don’t know how to communicate with them.

P.S. I had a job interview today with a travel company.  I hope I got it.  I am on borrowed time, financially.  I’ll find out Monday or Tuesday.  I guess the management job I applied for did not go through.  Lame.

Send me your money.  Pay my rent.

P.P.S. Canucks are out.  Bummer.

I am back. OH sweet Jaysus I am back. I did have some good times, but I could have almost kissed the ground when I returned.

I started getting panic attacks and feeling faint just being at my old house. It’s empty. So empty. It used to be full of people, and it used to be full of things that came to life when those people were there. Now it’s a sarcophagus. My house and my room, my front yard and the back yard, the street, the basement. It was so empty, dark and devoid of any feeling of life, even when there were people home besides my mom and myself.

The staff at YYZ were utterly unprofessional, and Air Canada managed to once again be a company capable of causing a minor debacle for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever fly with them again. Their flight attendants were fantastic, however, and if I ever fly with Air Canada again, the only reason other than them effectively having a monopoly in Canada is because their flight attendants were their saving grace.

The only kind employees for the whole company and they get the brunt of irate customers who are pissed off because of everyone who came before them.
It was so good to see everyone who I saw. Care & Pat, I love you guys to death. Thank you for taking my sweet pan dancing.

I want to go home.
Being here is starting to become difficult. I feel like I’m going to cry, except I don’t cry. I want to, but I can’t. The tears just don’t come out. I don’t know what it takes to reduce me to tears, but it takes a lot, I guess. Obviously it takes more than sitting at ground zero of the place that reminds me of the most painful things that have happened in my life.

I should grow the fuck up and not brood over the things I cannot change, but that is easier said than done. No… I’ve accepted I can’t change these things, but I’m still haunted by them. Haunted stiff.

Those problems will never go away, but it’s getting intense. Toronto is making me ill and I don’t know if I can ever come back. I’m sure I will, but I don’t know when. I just want to be in Vancouver right now, but be able to bring a few select people in my luggage.

I want to go home. I want my dad back. I want to go home. If my dad was here, maybe this would be home. I came to visit “home” and it didn’t exist.

I’ve sat in an airport, waiting hours for my plane to take off. I’ve sat on stools at airport bars, as a teenager, hunched over my double vodka soda; my double black Russian; my glass of red wine: surrounded by lonely, broken businessmen who were drinking $7.45 pints of Molson Draft, while drunkenly chatting up the bartender about absolutely nothing.

I always seemed to be able to join in on the conversation about absolutely nothing. Relate. I don’t know why. In those airports, everyone becomes everyone else. Not zombies or drones. Just everybody else. Uniform in an overpriced limbo full of little uncertainty, but maximum apprehension.

You can talk about absolutely nothing, because you enter into this strange little world. I can remember thinking of painful thoughts; emotional baggage waiting for me at my destination, to replace the emotional baggage I had left behind. But somehow it couldn’t plague me at an airport.

That cliche of being surrounded by thousands of people, while simultaneously so alone, can’t ever be applied to an international airport. Maybe you are alone. Maybe I was emotionally alone, but that aloneness is the most amazing thing ever. I don’t know why.

How is it peaceful — relaxing, to be rushing from gate to gate? To be sighing over 3$ coffees and 8$ garden salads in the departure terminals? To be bumping into obnoxious people; listening to screaming, crying children; being sandwiched between frat boys on the bar-plane (red eye) home, all the while knowing you have something waiting for you and something you’re trying to shake off?

Are those romantic ideas? Is it more romantic to brood over the inconveniences, the detachment associated with flying from city to city? Is that more romantic than hoping that the love of your life will surprise you by standing in the arrivals terminal, much to your surprise?

I expected to be greeted by a cab driver, not the man of my dreams. He brought me cigarettes and a toothbrush. He told me how much he missed me, and loved me, and how he was waiting for the day I would return.

That is not romance, that is self-indulgence.

You don’t even know it.

Blah blah blah blah blah feelings.

Emo? No.

My brain is going on vacation soon…

What? feelings? Why? Who? Huh……

Moooooooore than a feeeeeeling!111 When I hear that old sooon plaaaaaaay?!?!?!&*@#*&$^*&@#$

Good old AABA compound form songs, eh.

Boston…. Massachussetts … New Hampshire…..West Chesterfield.

Couches…… chairs….. chairman of the bored. Iggy Pop……

Tangents.

Tangerines.

Mighty morphine power rangers.